Business Coach | Soft Selling In a Hard World + Skills Mastery 101 + “Becoming a master is not about doing 4, 000 things. It’s about doing 12 things 4, 000 times.” – Chet Holmes + Join Tim Tebow At Clay Clark’s June 5-6 Workshop

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 33)
Look at that beat. Here goes Aubrey.

(Speaker 34)
Woo!

(Speaker 33)
Angelina, you want to dance? Angelina, you want to dance? This is a good dancing song.

(Speaker 15)
There you go, Avi. Yeah, baby. You have to go like this. You have to go like this. You have to go like this. You have to go like this.

(Speaker 21)
You have to go like this.

(Speaker 32)
You have to go like this.

(Speaker 1)
You have to go like this.

(Speaker 15)
You have to go like this. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’ll show you how to get rich. We started from the bottom, now we’re here.

(Speaker 1)
We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Thrive Nation, there are very few legal ways to get rich quick. Your chance of finding one of those opportunities is very, very slim. Or about twice the odds of getting hurt in a commercial plane crash twice. Now, the bright side is that getting rich slowly is actually fun and will yield you thousands of adventures in the process. And on today’s show, we are interviewing a guy by the name of Jerry Vassass who wrote a book called Soft Selling in a Hard World where he explains in great detail that there are

(Speaker 1)
only three ways to really make exceptional money as an entrepreneur. One, you gotta work in a place where no one else wants to be. I had a buddy of mine years ago that was an Alaskan fisherman fishing in Alaska. Sounds like a lot of fun. No it’s not. I had one of our employees years ago that was an Alaskan fisherman. Fishing in Alaska. Sounds like a lot of fun. No, it’s not. I had one of our employees years ago that worked on an oil rig out there in the Gulf of Mexico. Rumor has it we have a couple of podcast subscribers located in the

(Speaker 1)
Gulf of Mexico who listen to each and every show. And I know you guys probably don’t enjoy the time away from your family and living on a floating city that smells like oil but you get paid well right. The second way to get rich is you can perform work that no one else wants to do. Sales. No one seems to want to do sales. I like doing sales but a lot of people fear sales. They’re scared of sales. They just don’t know how to sell and when you can’t sell your business will just go to hell. And the third the

(Speaker 1)
third way to get rich is to do work that no one else can do. Well, Steph Curry can do that and he’s pretty awesome at it. Leonardo DiCaprio could do that and he’s pretty great at it. I mean Oprah, I don’t know how many people could do what Oprah does. Serena Williams, Venus Williams, I mean there’s a lot of people out there that are LeBron James that can do things that I frankly can’t do. And that’s why I like to pay people with that kind of skill. I like to watch them. I like to vote with my dollars and say, yeah, Brad Pitt, you’re a better actor than me, Mr. Tom Hanks, you’re better than me. I like

(Speaker 1)
to pay to watch your movie. So again, the three ways to get rich are you can work in a place where no one else wants to be, you could do work that no one else wants to do, or you could perform work nobody else can do. And it’s really the last two conditions for making extraordinary money that we’re going to explore on today’s show. You see, learning to sell softly isn’t only about money, it’s about enjoying the process of sales.

(Speaker 1)
This little manual called Soft Selling in a Hard World is all about reality. It’s about a survival guide for the strange mastering of persuasion. It’s kind of a strange road to learning how to master persuasion.

(Speaker 1)
It shows you the mechanics. Soft Selling in a Hard World teaches you the mechanics needed to sell well. That’s what the book is about. The book is designed to teach you the specific tactics, not the strategy. To walk you through the step-by-step process that you need to take. And the whole system, what’s great about it is you can learn the whole system and implement the system and write all the scripts and utilize the system in a way where other people can do what you can do. You can make

(Speaker 1)
yourself repeatable and duplicatable so you can create not just a job but you can create a thriving business that can create both time freedom and financial freedom for you. My friend, selling is the highest paid profession in the world. I mean our leaders in politics, business, and research, and the arts, they’re all great salespeople. A lot of times you don’t realize that they’re selling. You see presidential candidates, heads of companies.

(Speaker 1)
Steve Jobs was legendary for his annual presentations. Warren Buffett. You don’t think of Joel Osteen as selling, but he’s trying to convince you to become a Christian. He’s trying to share with you the love of Christ. You might not think of Oprah as a salesperson, but she’s trying to convince you to tune in and watch the show again. You might not think about President Obama as a salesperson, but he’s trying to get you

(Speaker 1)
to vote for him. He was trying to get you to vote for him. He was trying to get you to vote for his ideology. So if you’ve ever struggled to sell well, this show is for you. Or if you’re very good at sales, but you’ve ever struggled to teach a team of people with no experience to sell, that’s where the magic is. Can you teach an army of people to sell

(Speaker 1)
well? If you’ve ever struggled with learning how to personally sell or how to teach an army of people to sell, you are going to absolutely love today’s show as I interview a great man, a wonderful friend of the show, Jerry Vass. Jerry Vass at the age of 83 is now retired, enjoying the high life there, living in Florida, enjoying his home in Jacksonville and the fruits of his efforts. But he decided to come on to the show, my friend Jerry Vast decided to come on to the show and to share with us the answers to so many questions that I had

(Speaker 1)
as a result of reading his book, Soft Selling in a Hard World. If you don’t have the book, get it today, get a pen and pad, you to get a piece of paper. This is a show where you got to take a lot of notes. And I would encourage you to get Soft Selling in a Hard World today. With any further ado, my exclusive interview with Jerry Vass. Also, just a quick disclaimer, I apologize for the audio quality of this audio only interview but his phone was kind of cutting out a little bit we tried to edit it the best that we could and so without any further ado here’s Jerry Vass.

(Speaker 1)
Alright Thrive Nation welcome back to another great conversation and on the Thrive Time show today, Chup I could not be more excited to have the man that I would consider the godfather of systemic sales. You see, back in the day, Eric, I started working in the world of commercial real estate. One of my clients wanted to go into commercial real estate, and before we exited Fears and Clark, we actually had the commercial real estate listings for one-third of downtown

(Speaker 1)
Tulsa. That’s roughly 33 percent. And do you know, do you know what sales book we use to build our scripts, our systems, our processes, the entire system that we used at Fears and Clark when representing Kanbar Properties and roughly one-third of downtown Tulsa. Do you know what system, what book we read, Chuck? What book was it, Clay? Soft Selling in a Hard World by

(Speaker 5)
you Mr. Vass. How are you sir? I’m perfect thank you very much and I want to tell you I’m flattered by all of this I’m not used to doing this anymore because I’ve been out of the training business for 10 years because I had old and my mind went over took a my mind took a vacation so that that was the best kick.

(Speaker 1)
Well, I appreciate you, and you are much sharper than I am. I aspire to be half as sharp as you think you once were. I mean, your book is amazing, the book, Soft Selling in a Hard World. And in that book, Jerry, you wrote, if you aren’t selling up to your potential,

(Speaker 1)
you probably don’t understand that selling is a game. Most people don’t. Those who do make 85% of the money become executives or run their own successful businesses. This book is about fulfilling your potential without resorting to motivational and inspirational beliefs. As in sports, you find that certain mechanical moves need to be mastered

(Speaker 1)
before your inspiration or genius can shine. Like a dog, a dog can be inspired to chase a car, but doesn’t know what to do with the car once it’s caught it. This knowledge is about what you do when you catch the car. That thin slice of face-to-face time with the buyer when persuasion really occurs. Jerry, I’d love for you to expound on this. That’s such a beautiful excerpt from your book. I’d love to get your thoughts on it.

(Speaker 5)
Surely. Well, I use the word game in the sense of a professional sport. And just as any professional sport, one has to understand the game, develop and polish the skills needed, and have a plan for the big contest. In selling, that translates to getting your story together, getting your tools ready, and practicing your delivery. And putting it all together under pressure in front of a prospective

(Speaker 5)
client. You may hear someone say, you know, if my job doesn’t work out, I can always sell. You never hear them say, if my job doesn’t work out, I can always be an NFL quarterback.

(Speaker 1)
Right. Right. And I think the preparation that you teach in your book is what allowed me to be successful. Because Jerry, when I was sitting down meeting with somebody about listing their commercial real estate, they would ask me directly, how many other listings do you have? And I would tell them we

(Speaker 1)
have this many listings, and they would say, what makes you different than the competition? And I had it all on a one sheet. I had all my sales presentations. I had all my testimonials all my Statistics I had a system for it I had incorporated all seven of your selling moves and it helped me be proactive so that I could lead the conversation build rapport with the buyer find their needs deliver benefits supported by facts and Close deals Jerry in your book soft selling in a Hard World, you wrote that sales as a profession identified with the worst of its practitioners. On behalf

(Speaker 1)
of that group, I apologize for anybody who I did a poor sales presentation on years ago. Not the best. It happens. Because they sell so well, the public doesn’t identify those that are at the top of the cultural heap. The politicians, the movie stars, the talk show hosts, the televangelists, and the business leaders, the world doesn’t view these people as salespeople, as outstanding salespeople. They’re rarely caught practicing the selling trade.

(Speaker 1)
The best of them are so good that people simply like their quote-unquote personalities because people easily confuse skill with personality. When you study the best, you find that they make many mechanical selling moves right. Is this due to practice or coincidence? Natural talent or learned response?

(Speaker 1)
Only they know for sure how much is talent and how much is learned. The results are the same. They convince, move ideas, create change, and solve problems. We love them for it, and we reward them with the best our culture offers. Fame, fortune, cool clothes, and a big house.

(Speaker 1)
Jerry, share with us about what great selling is and what bad selling looks like.

(Speaker 5)
Well, great selling is problem solving, pure and simple. You find the buyer’s real problem and working with the buyer to solve it. You work together. To do that, you have to ask intelligent questions and listen intently. Bad selling is vomiting your stuff, talking, pitching about your stuff, and seeing the whole transaction only from your own point of view.

(Speaker 5)
Successful selling is explaining well what you do from the client’s point of view. As in any activity, when someone is really good at what they do, it looks easy, even effortless. It’s transparent. And whether it’s running a podcast or playing tennis or skiing or selling, we all think we can do that.

(Speaker 4)
Until we try and learn how difficult it is.

(Speaker 1)
Oh, you know, the one thing, Eric, that happened to us years ago is we were approached, Jerry, by the Scripps Radio Network. They produce HGTV, the travel channel. And they said, Clay, we’d like to have you produce a show that we’re going to air in various markets throughout the United States.

(Speaker 1)
Now, I had heard a lot of Rush Limbaugh in my life, a lot of Glenn Beck, a lot of Tim Ferriss, a lot of Gary Vaynerchuk, a lot of the big names. And I have been a production person. I ran an entertainment company, so I’ve done a lot of audio production. And I realized going into it how hard it was going to be because I’ve been up close to it. But I can’t tell you how many people have listened to our podcast

(Speaker 1)
and have told me that they tried to produce a daily podcast for about four days in a row. Maybe. And they ran out of things to think about or talk about because they weren’t aware of the level of preparation needed. And so I think it’s really hard when you don’t know.

(Speaker 1)
And that’s what I love about your book, Soft Selling in a Hard World. Everybody needs to own a copy of it because you break down the science of how to sit down with the prospect and build rapport. And it’s very specific about what questions to ask. You break down how to listen intently. Then you explain how to find their problems, how to find their needs. Then you teach how to solve the problems, how to support it by facts.

(Speaker 1)
The book is so linear and it breaks it down where I think the world looks at people who are great at sales and says, that’s probably natural.

(Speaker 14)
Natural talent.

(Speaker 1)
But it’s not natural, it’s a system. And Jerry, we work with hundreds of business owners all over this great country and we often find that many of them seem scared of making sales calls. What would you say to somebody out there listening right now who is an entrepreneur or who wants to be, who’s afraid of picking up the phone and making sales calls?

(Speaker 5)
Well, I have told them often when I sit down with management, I say, look, you have a right to be scared because poor selling skills down the line are a message to your market. It’s your message to the market. And it is a waste of your money and you trash the market as you go and no business and no person likes rejection. The real problem is that all sales people and I stress all I include owners and managers here can see the upside of every possible transaction quote this could mean $10,000 to my company. And they also sense the downside,

(Speaker 5)
no sale, wasted time, expense, and they don’t have the skills they need to control the downside and weight the transaction in their favor. Most of the time, they don’t even know such skills exist. And they often confuse personal magnetism with selling skills and a signed contract with being liked. Neither of those is true. What is true is that buyers would buy from a donkey if he could solve their problem.

(Speaker 1)
Chuck, that’s why I’ve done so well. People are buying from the donkey.

(Speaker 14)
Yeah, we’ll use that word. That’s a good word to use. Not the other one.

(Speaker 1)
Only I can self-deprecate myself. That’s you deprecating on me. That’s just mean, isn’t it? Now, in your mind, Jerry, why does it seem like so many business owners are scared of rejection when it comes to sales? That fear, they fear the word no so much. Why? Because the real process is unknown to them.

(Speaker 5)
They’re walking into a situation thinking, I have a good product, but they don’t know one thing about the client personally and very little about the client’s business.

(Speaker 1)
So what would you say to a business owner, I see this all the time, they want to delegate their sales to an employee without actually using the script themselves first. They want to delegate the sales process to an employee when they personally have not used the system and or created a system.

(Speaker 1)
The owner wants to delegate their sales to an employee without them actually first creating and using the proven systems. What would you say?

(Speaker 5)
Well, not to be cute, but I’ve run up against this quite often. I just say, look, you’re an idiot. Because if you owned a major sports team, you wouldn’t put a player on the field just because you liked him or her. You’d insist on training and practice and lots of it.

(Speaker 5)
Managing salespeople is one of the most difficult aspects of running a business. I mean, I’ve been in business since I was 17 years old. I’m now 83, so you can count it up. Partly because salespeople take their cue from management and many managers are not themselves trained We’ve often trained salespeople where the managers would not come into the room with them And so the salespeople ended up knowing more about sales than the managers did which caused conflicts

(Speaker 5)
You know in sales to me because the people who went whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. And the manager’s going, no, this is what we’re gonna do. The more years involved they are with their product or service, the shallower the presentation becomes. The senior sales person is often the worst person to teach others down the line. They’re often product oriented, make a few new calls, and sell to their old connections

(Speaker 5)
so they don’t like being told they don’t know what they’re doing. Business has changed now, and businesses that keep on selling the same way will eventually fall behind.

(Speaker 1)
You know, Jerry, in Soft Selling in a Hard World, you wrote a statement that blew my mind the first time I read it, and I just kept reading it again and again. It says, there are only three ways to make exceptional money. To work in a place nobody wants to be, that’s one. To work in a place where nobody wants to be, that’s one. If you’re writing this down, Thrive Nation.

(Speaker 1)
To work in a place where nobody wants to be. Two, to perform work nobody else wants to do. Or three, to do work that nobody else can do. So as we’re kind of thinking about that, Chup, I DJed hell gigs at the Holiday Inn Select, Jerry, I was a disc jockey, seven days a week at the Holiday Inn Select for impersonators. So one, I was doing work in a place no one wanted to do it.

(Speaker 1)
Two, I was doing work that nobody else wanted to do because no one else wanted to be a DJ seven nights a week for impersonators who pretended to be Neil Diamond and Michael Jackson. And then three, I did work that nobody else could do because who knows how to host four shows in a row

(Speaker 1)
that are exactly the same saying exactly the same jokes and pretending like you care while bringing the heat every single every single time Jerry people would pour in I’d say folks welcome to the incredible holiday and select you guys are in for a treat we’ve got Neil Diamond in the flesh and everyone’s going you know and I had to tee it up every time I was like as Ed McMahon I mean so it’s so true. That is such a true statement.

(Speaker 1)
So I ask you Thrive Nation, how are you gonna get rich? Now you have to perform work that no one else wants to do, to perform work no one else can do, or to work at a place nobody else wants to be. Jerry, talk to us about the importance

(Speaker 1)
of facing the reality that these are the only three ways to get rich unless you’re a unicorn example. Yes, or a drug dealer,

(Speaker 5)
or a liquor distributor or something. I’m going to write that down. These are the financial conditions we all cope with daily. This book is about dealing with the second and third ways doing what no one else wants to do and what no one else can do. As you have said, people are scared of selling and many don’t have the skills to close deals. Learning to sell well allows you to bravely meet both of those conditions where you both

(Speaker 5)
want to and can do.

(Speaker 1)
Jerry, I love when you write in your book you say this book is about mechanics. I’ll preach it. It is designed from the street up tactics not strategy. You won’t find any magic here there is none. There’s no underlying motivation or belief. Here’s my favorite part it says it isn’t about something larger than yourself. You don’t have to believe in it to make it pay. You don’t even have to believe in yourself. You just have to use mechanics.

(Speaker 1)
Jerry, I want to pile on there, Chuck, because when I was selling commercial real estate, I didn’t care about commercial real estate. I would say the vast majority of the business ventures that I’m involved in right now are in industries and things that I am 100% dispassionate about. But my friend, why is great selling really just about mastering the mechanics of sales?

(Speaker 5)
Well, done well. Selling is a profession. And learning a profession isn’t something that happens naturally or in a vacuum. It takes an awareness of errors and learning from those errors and correcting the errors and in doing so, you eventually learn the profession. Persuasion as a profession

(Speaker 5)
is no different. It requires attention, troubleshooting, and practice.

(Speaker 1)
Jerry, I think that it seems so simple, you almost feel like, is that it? Is that it? No, but listen, it’s not Thrive Nation, it’s not a one-time event, it’s a process. And so, Chuck, we have our sales meetings every single week at Thrive, every Tuesday, Jerry, because of you and your book, Jerry, you caused this problem. We train our team every single week, and in that meeting, we record the calls, and we

(Speaker 1)
play back the calls of actual sales presentations. We watch actual videos.

(Speaker 14)
And while reading the script at the same time.

(Speaker 1)
And while the actual sales people, Jerry, are in the room. So the sales people actually get to watch themselves physically presenting on video and on audio every single week. And we do it every week. Jerry, for somebody out there that wants to do sales training like one time, why does it require ongoing training? Could you share that? Why does sales

(Speaker 5)
require ongoing practice? For the same reason that football players have to practice every Saturday and several times during the week in order to stay sharp, there are only so many responses that are available to the buyer, both in role plays and in reality. When you hear them enough times, you go, I know what to do with this. It takes a surprise out of the transaction for the seller. You just get better and better. And I have to say, having your sales meeting once a week and doing role plays, I did that

(Speaker 5)
with, I owned a brokerage in Telluride, Colorado for 30 years, and I role played my people every Monday morning at 7.30, much to everybody’s pain. And we control 30% of the total market, two of us. So it’s one of those things where you go, when this comes to this, this is what you do, this is what you do. You run down, you go for the long pass or you go for the short out or whatever. So it’s the practice and all of that is very is a very serious and rewarding activity for the business owner. So Jerry can you

(Speaker 1)
explain to the listeners why you believe that sales is that that soft sales is a

(Speaker 5)
learned skill? Why do you believe that? Well because it doesn’t come naturally to us, for 30 years we taught a course in unnatural acts and because the stuff is just not a natural response, it is a learned response. So for the soft sell, one has to put away the ego and let the buyer do the work. Well believe it or not, it is very difficult for people to allow the the buyer do the work. Well, believe it or not, it is very difficult for people to allow the buyer to do the work. We live in a culture that tells us

(Speaker 5)
we sellers are the center of the universe, and to sell well, one has to allow and encourage the buyer to be the center of his or her own universe. Salespeople should talk more than 40% of the time. The buyer should talk 60% of the time. Great salespeople are all above average listeners.

(Speaker 5)
When we taught people to do shortlist presentations in front of committees and buying groups and so on. We taught them how to give a mission statement, open with a probe, and then sit back and watch the action rather than talk and talk and talk and do slide after slide and get into slide depth. So that this is we teach this we basically we did a course in civilized conversation which is allow those people to do the work. I love it I

(Speaker 1)
love it I totally believe in the rule of conversational generosity let the prospect let the buyer talk the majority of the time. Now Jerry, there’s another knowledge bomb from your book that I highlighted and underlined multiple times and it read, if you have a world-class idea and you want to give it away for the good of humanity, you will have to sell the concept and if you can’t sell it, you’ll be stuck with your idea. Poorer for your brilliance

(Speaker 1)
and generosity. It seems unfair but even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship Or the receiver does not perceive the true value of the gift Jerry why do so many people push back on the idea of learning how to sell? effectively and resort to saying dumb things like This product is so good it will sell itself.

(Speaker 5)
Well, because they love this illusion, there’s a, it is a cultural thing in my estimation. It is maybe 2% of the time it’s true that something will sell itself. But if your stuff sells itself, and it’s not really selling, it is order taking.

(Speaker 5)
We all love the idea of the financial miracle, winning the lottery or unexpected inheritance from a rich aunt, and we’re all looking for the magic bullet, whether it’s weight loss or closing deals. Those are myths too, and they’re fun, but selling is a skill. There are no shortcuts to getting good at it and no quick fixes. It may not be the fun you’re looking for, but the profession is very lucrative.

(Speaker 4)
The highest paid people in our culture are salespeople.

(Speaker 1)
I agree with that. I agree with that. And I think that there are many, many people out there that want to go into the marketplace and they want to just state, my product is the best, therefore it’s going to sell itself. And Jerry, in your book you write, puffery is hot air. Webster’s dictionary defines it as flattery, publicity, exaggerated commendation, especially

(Speaker 1)
for promotional purposes. In selling, it is claims that are unproven as stated. Typically, puffery words and phrases are we’re number one, we’re the best in our business, save big money, a lot, high profits, and the fastest, etc. Can you explain for our listeners the profound difference between attempting to sell using puffery versus attempting to sell using representation, benefits, and facts.

(Speaker 5)
Well, in a downscale market, we buy puffery all the time, but I happen to be in the executive sales training business, and so we were teaching people to sell at the very highest levels, which of course also works at the lower levels. The less sophisticated the buyer, the more likely they are to buy Puffrey. But buyers view Puffrey as lies. They may not be intentional, but the buyers don’t believe them. First, they make all salespeople sound the same.

(Speaker 5)
So everybody in your business then sounds the same. And when you get killed on a price negotiation, you have no defense. And second, they set up conflicts with your buyer.

(Speaker 1)
I want to ask you this, Jerry. This is not about the sales process, but it’s about you, the sales wizard. How long did it take you to write that book, Self-Selling in a Hard World, which is the Bible of sales? That thing is amazing. How long did it take you to read that book, Self-Selling in a Hard World, which is the Bible of sales. That thing is amazing. How long did it take you to read that or to write that thing?

(Speaker 1)
That thing is awesome.

(Speaker 5)
Well, probably around six months. It’s a funny story. We don’t have time to do it here. Someday when we’re sitting over drinks, I’ll tell you the funny story about my book. Coming to you tomorrow. But it was one of those things. I wrote it as part of a software program I was developing

(Speaker 5)
at the time because I had my own bit rich scheme about how to build a playbook on a computer and so we were developing that in the very early, early days. And that book was just part of a package of teaching people how to sell using computers. So it was really an ancillary program, an ancillary project, I’m sorry, to this larger idea, which the larger idea failed. But the book was residual out of that.

(Speaker 5)
And it’s now sold about, I don’t know, 80,000 or so. It’s been on the market for 30, we figured out the other day, 32 years or something it’s been on the

(Speaker 1)
market. So it’s been backlisted a long time. It’s kind of one of those books there that I run into a lot of high-level salespeople that have read the book. Oh yeah. But it’s not a book that everybody… if you’re listening to this podcast, you should own the book. But if you’re working for a company and you’re selling burritos and you have no curiosity about how sales works, you should read the book, but you probably won’t because it would require a lot of work and thinking. But that book is awesome. Soft selling in a hard world.

(Speaker 1)
Jerry, I want to go back now to asking you some of these questions about specifically the closing move. Can you share with us what the closing move looks like to you?

(Speaker 5)
Sure. Actually the closing move is the last move of the seven selling moves that is explored in depth in the book. And in fact, most of the course that we teach or used to teach had to do with covering the seven selling moves. It took three days. So it just encompasses this entire idea of how to do persuasion from the buyer’s point of view. And in selling

(Speaker 5)
this move that’s called the close, this is the move that scares everybody to death. And it’s not just you. It is where people go, my God, what do I do now? In selling, Lore, this is the scariest move. However, this seventh move is the simplest move at all. But only if you have set up your whole meeting from your first

(Speaker 5)
words to solve the buyer’s problem. The actual words to close can be as simple as, well, how do you see us working together to solve this problem? Or where do you think we should go from here? Or something along those lines, and let the buyer do the work. Now we often get a comment when we teach this that well they never said yes. Well they were never required to say yes. It was all

(Speaker 5)
assumed that they would say yes and if they answered this question where would you like to go from here? You don’t need yes no. It just doesn’t come to that.

(Speaker 1)
You know with our wedding photography company and then with real estate, people ask me, they would look up Fears and Clark online and by the way if you’re out there at Thrive Nation, take the challenge, type in Fears, F-E-A-R-S, Clark, and then Kanbar. Maurice Kanbar there, Jerry, is the guy who invented sky vodka and after selling sky vodka for 600 million dollars he purchased one-third of downtown Tulsa and he asked me to list and market his properties for him and People would ask me all the time clay when you’re signing all those leases. What did you say to close the deal?

(Speaker 1)
How’d you do it? I said well I won. I’m using my Jerry Vass move So I’m never gonna say well do you want to go ahead and lease the space? I’d say, well, how much space do you need after you’ve looked at it?

(Speaker 31)
You want 12,000 square feet or 10?

(Speaker 5)
I’m sorry I stepped on your line, but that’s what I was looking for.

(Speaker 1)
I would say that. And then I would say now, OK, 12 or 10. OK, 12. OK. And then when would walk in to the office every time. And Braxton was there, and Bueno was there, and Tonya was there, and our team

(Speaker 1)
was there. And every time they’d go, did you get the deal? And I’d say, guys, this deal was kind of tough. And so they could only pay with a credit card and I would just get a deal every time I would close every deal I am not kidding I went Jerry in 2007 when I ran my company DJ connection as a result of your book soft selling in a hard world I went the entire year we booked 4,000 weddings and of all the appointments we set I only had one person say no the entire year. Whoa. One. Shannon and Clark.

(Speaker 14)
You still remember him?

(Speaker 27)
Oh yeah.

(Speaker 1)
Oh yeah. Oh he shut me down, Jerry. He said everyone in town’s using you so I decided to use somebody else.

(Speaker 14)
Well, go ahead.

(Speaker 1)
So it was, that move works. Now Jerry, you write in your book that trickery in closing is like trickery anywhere else. It’s short-lived. What do you mean by this?

(Speaker 5)
I mean, people teach, and I won’t drop names, but you know who they are. They say, well, there’s the puppy dog close, and there’s this kind of close, and there’s this reverse close, and I’m going, no, that’s bullish, I’m sorry. That is not right because it takes away from the buyer’s attention. The buyer hates that kind of stuff because they know all of these tricks.

(Speaker 5)
And so because they know the tricks, the tricks fall flat and it just turns the seller into this shuck and jive guy. Instead of being somebody that you would want to do business with, you go, well, if you shuck and jive me here in this transaction, what’s he hold for me down line when we’re in a serious business?

(Speaker 5)
That’s why trickery doesn’t work very well. And if you are in low street sales, pots and pans and that sort of thing, perhaps you can get away with it. But if you’re going to be a legitimate professional salesperson, don’t use trickery.

(Speaker 1)
I love the phrase shuck and jive. Chup, I’m going to begin using shuck and jive and shenanigans as words on the show more often than not. I agree. Hold me accountable. Why have I not said shuck and jive for a long time?

(Speaker 14)
You’re practicing shenanigans and you need to cut it out.

(Speaker 1)
Jerry has a better master of the English language than I have. That’s the whole issue I have here. Now, Jerry, I want to brag on Paul Hood, who’s on the show today. Paul and his company, hoodcpas.com, if you’re checking it out. By the way, we’re number three right now on the iTunes charts. No puffery there, Jerry. In the business section, in the iTunes charts, we’re number three out of 530,000 podcasts, according to the Wall Street Journal, in all categories. I’m talking comedy, sports, I’m talking about comedy, sports, business, we are number 26 as of the time of the recording of today’s podcast.

(Speaker 1)
So Paul’s been a sponsor the entire time, and Paul, over there at Hood CPAs, if somebody comes in and they meet with you and they do a consultation, you have multiple packages that the customer can choose from, can you kind of explain, not necessarily all the specifics, but about the idea of having multiple packages and just letting the customer choose the options when you go for the clothes?

(Speaker 9)
You bet, Clay. And one of the reasons we did that, it kind of ties in with Jerry’s book, is Law of Clarity, where he says if you can’t explain your product to a 10-year-old, then you don’t know your product very well. You’re not a very good salesman. And so what we have is we basically try to break it down into three decisions.

(Speaker 9)
And also so that it’s not a decision between yes and no. It’s a decision between which of the three do they want. And they go from a very basic, comprehensive, where we’re just doing some consulting-type work and meeting with them once a month to the next style. Maybe if it’s a business we’re doing accounting plus all the consulting, the third one would be if we’re doing payroll and accounting and consulting.

(Speaker 9)
But it breaks it down to where, all right, Mr. Potential Client, which of these three do you want? Which best fits your needs?

(Speaker 1)
We’re doing textbook the soft-selling close. That’s right. Now, Chup, I want to teach Jerry a word here on this next question. Jerry, you’ve brought us back to Shuck and Jive and shenanigans. So I’m going to give you a word. I’m a huge New England Patriots fan, and the word I would like to teach you today is wicked

(Speaker 1)
awesome. Wicked. Wicked awesome. And that’s one word. If anything is great in Boston, it’s Wicked Awesome. It’s not hyphenated. It’s just Wicked Awesome. So Jerry, I would like for you to break down your Wicked Awesome bonus move on page 119 of soft selling in a hard world.

(Speaker 1)
You write about this Wicked Awesome move called cross-selling. What is cross-selling all about and why is it so Wicked Awesome important?

(Speaker 5)
Well, it’s Wicked Awesome important because important because many if not most sales people have several things to sell and after the buyers first agreement because you’re gonna be closing incrementally and after the first of agreement the salesperson now has a proven performer in the buyer and must move on to the second and third sale and so on Some businesses can’t even survive without cross-sells and successful cross-selling cuts across the cost of sales and

(Speaker 5)
increases profits and you run into it very often when you buy something and say you want an extended warranty with that or fries with that burger, you need to add on accessories for that car. Well that’s where the real profit comes and so add-on sales really is the profit center for many of these businesses and a way to survival for them.

(Speaker 1)
You know Best Buy…

(Speaker 5)
The cost always starts with a probe, too, by the way. Always starts with a question. And so, you can just continue on. I remember I was trained early on and I was selling mutual funds in one of my many careers. And I didn’t know what I was doing.

(Speaker 5)
I didn’t know a damn thing about mutual funds. I didn’t know anything about that business, but I was taught how to sell it. And I went out and I just kept selling until I ran out of things to sell. I finally had to shrug my shoulders and say, well, that’s it for me. I’m done. I don’t have anything else left.

(Speaker 5)
So cross-selling is and can be pretty high adventure, particularly on high-end stuff like high-end real estate. I’m talking business buildings and that sort of thing, because I taught that for 30 years. And these people are making a million and a half, two million, three million dollars per sale. They practiced all the time. All the time. And when they practiced, they were serious men because there was serious money involved. And these were serious, bright,

(Speaker 5)
educated people. And they were wonderful to teach.

(Speaker 1)
Now this is something I want to hammer home on here, because, Chup, this great selling doesn’t, as Jerry has mentioned in his book and then on today’s podcast, great salespeople don’t even look like they’re selling, Paul. It’s just, it’s happening.

(Speaker 1)
And I’ll never forget this, Jerry. I called the Book of Cruz with Karen Wheelock. And if you’re out there and you know Karen Wheelock, say that Clay Clark is bragging on her because she was good. And if you are Karen Wheelock, Clay Clark is bragging on you. Oh, you’re the best, Karen Wheelock. So I went to book a cruise, you know, and Karen says, well, great. Yeah.

(Speaker 1)
And I said, how much are the cruises? And Karen said to me, this is the first cruise I went on, I insisted on being the cheapest price possible. and I had a small boat, got motion sickness the entire time. So the second time I call and I said, Karen how much do you charge? How much would it be? And she says, Clay, do you… let me ask you, what are you looking to do here? What’s the big occasion? And I tell her and she’s, oh, oh, so you’re gonna surprise her? Oh

(Speaker 1)
really? Wow. So let me ask you this, what are some of her favorite activities. Next thing you know she’s got the probing questions going on. Next thing you know, Jerry, she booked an appointment. She got me to commit not to buying something but commit to the appointment within 72 hours. You know, kind of within that window of time when I’m still interested. I met with her and she just continued asking me, well if you’re gonna be here don’t you want at least have like a balcony or don’t you want to least have like a balcony? Or don’t you want to get this room service? Or what about tickets to that? Have you thought about a catamaran tour?

(Speaker 1)
And Jerry, somehow that $1,000 cruise, I feel like that $1,000 per person cruise turned out to be about $5,000 per person, but it was wicked awesome. It was really good. So the cross sell, I mean, that is, whoo. And one thing, Jerry, that you’ve talked about is that during your years working with thousands

(Speaker 1)
of salespeople, you’ve noticed that salespeople will instantly freeze up and seem to almost have kind of like a panic attack. I’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. It’s a salesperson has almost like an anxiety, immediate panic attack. It’s like their brain shuts off as soon as a buyer inserts any objections whatsoever. Why is it that most salespeople need to learn to overcome objections?

(Speaker 5)
Well, quite frankly, if you can figure out what the problem is in the objection, you’re about halfway to an answer just on that part without doing anything. So when you hear an objection, the first thing you have to do is figure out what the real objection is. English is a very complex language, and what you think you heard and what the buyer really

(Speaker 5)
is saying can be quite different. So the first move is to ask a question. Something simple as why is that? Or help me understand why you say that? Or what is going on here, et cetera. We’re now assuming salespeople have playbooks,

(Speaker 5)
so they will have practice the answer to this objection. But it takes practice and you’re on the money having people practice, particularly in front of recording devices, cameras, and so on, because people cannot simply believe how bad they are until they see themselves on camera.

(Speaker 5)
It’s just humiliating.

(Speaker 1)
I mean, I watch myself on camera and I just hang my head and cry. Now, Jerry, you’ve written much about how salespeople can truly make a fortune if they understand that the profits are in solving the problems. I repeat, Chup, the profits are in solving the problems. Chup, I’m not sure if I’m communicating, maybe my mic is cutting out. You say the problems are… I mean the problems are in solving problems.

(Speaker 1)
Ah. Chuck, do you get what I’m saying? The prophets. Let me try it in Spanish. El profito… El profito are in…

(Speaker 14)
In solving el problemo.

(Speaker 1)
Right. So, all right. solving el problemo. Right. All right, so can you talk to us about what you mean by that?

(Speaker 5)
Sure. When we circle back to the top of our talk today, selling is problem solving. When selling to executives, there are really seven business problems that seem to be universal, which we discovered

(Speaker 5)
in learning from our students. They’re outlined in detail in my other book, Self-Selling to Executives, and they pop up over and over again. They are to acquire and manage capital, acquire and manage people, find and fill markets, meet and exceed the competition, improve quality and lower costs of production, maintain sufficient and predictable cash flow, maintain control and predictable overhead. When you’re selling into this stuff at the business level,

(Speaker 5)
life goes pretty well. I mean, it’s just that because people are not gonna argue with these. Say, look, we’re here to help you pick one, cut your overhead, or either exceed the competition, or find and fill a new market,

(Speaker 5)
or acquire and manage your people, or your finances. So when you hit the business level for upscale clients, that’s where the money is. And really selling becomes consulting at that point where you really are genuinely bringing value,

(Speaker 5)
true value to your client.

(Speaker 1)
I want to make sure that the listeners get a specific example of this, okay? So Jerry, if somebody out there listens to our podcast and they reach out to us for business coaching, here are just some of the problems that we can solve and I’ll just kind of list them out and Paul, you can chime in if there’s something I’m missing out on.

(Speaker 14)
Hey, I got a quote here. It’s a business guru. If you’ve got a problem, you’ll all solve it. Check out the moves.

(Speaker 10)
Well, my DJ revolves it.

(Speaker 1)
Thank you for quoting Vanilla Ice, the early 90s rapper. Business guru. Jerry, are you a big fan of Vanilla Ice? Were you a big fan of the early 90s rapper Vanilla Ice?

(Speaker 5)
Yes, uh-huh.

(Speaker 1)
Okay. So this is the thing, though. People say, what do you guys do? Well, we do all the search engine. So what’s the problem we’re solving? How do you get to the top of Google? So we’re getting you to the top of Google. We help you make a workflow. What problem does that solve? It helps you create time freedom.

(Speaker 1)
Paul, sales scripting. What problem does it help for you when our organization helps you with sales scripting. How does that help you Paul? Well it helps by creating a duplicatable system that can be scaled so that it’s all not all dependent upon the top salesperson, me. Videography, what problem does that solve Eric for our

(Speaker 10)
listeners out there? Yeah we’re oftentimes educating the customer on who we are, what we sell, and we’re showing them happy previous clients and

(Speaker 1)
testimonial videos as well. A lot of our clients can’t afford a videographer. They can’t do it. So we do the videography, the photography, the web development, the sales scripting, but we have to think about it in terms of the buyer. What are the problems we’re solving for you? And the problem for you, the average month, month to month, for less money than it costs to hire a $10 per hour employee, you get all that stuff. And so that’s the…

(Speaker 1)
But I think, Jerry, a lot of us, we can become so experts of what we’re… we can become such an expert and a guru of our industry that we can’t explain it to anybody. And that’s why I love the chapter of your book where you talk about the importance of positive self-talk and really sharing with yourself on an ongoing basis this positive, intentional self-talk and coaching yourself up so when you head into the presentation you’re saying, you know, I can do this. I’ve got it.

(Speaker 30)
I’ve prepared.

(Speaker 1)
I already know what I’m doing. Jerry, can you talk to us about the importance of being intentional about what you say to yourself as a salesperson?

(Speaker 5)
Yes, yes. Because all of us, I mean I have never met anybody who sold who didn’t have fear at some level. And I mean I’ve walked in many, many boardrooms to sell our services and I knew exactly what I was going to do and how to control it because I had studied it and written a couple of books about it and all of that. But even then, I mean, it’s pretty easy to get tense in those things when it goes out of control. When suddenly the answer to a question ends up over in left field someplace, you’re looking

(Speaker 5)
at it and going, what the hell do I do now? So it’s easy for us to talk ourselves out of selling when all we can see is the stress of it. Preparation knowing exactly where you’re going and where you’re taking the buyer can change that. There are many more problems than problem solvers so it’s kind of an incumbent on the sales person to keep their eye on the problem. What is the problem? You could continue to go what is the problem? If you

(Speaker 5)
know what the problems are when you walk in, I would open with those. I would go into the boardrooms of big firms and my opening shot, I just take a look around the room and say, Hey there, my name is Jerry Vance, and when your people walk in to sell your services, they don’t know what they’re doing, and so they have one wreck right after another, often three wrecks before they get to the end of the first sentence.

(Speaker 5)
And they go, Whoa, because you can prove it. There it is. And they know it. Somewhere in their heart, they know that I am telling them the truth.

(Speaker 4)
Let’s take the accounting business. 90% of new businesses fail within three years. That would be my opening shot.

(Speaker 1)
90% of businesses fail within three years. So right away it gets the attention of everybody in the room and you can prove it.

(Speaker 5)
And it’s provable and it’s researchable and it’s all there and it scales down or up depending on your perspective. It scales up to that 10% is remaining but it’s like half fail within the first year, and there’s some long-term ratio that goes like that. So, and more fail within the second year, but by the third year, there’s only 10% left.

(Speaker 5)
And it’s pretty easy, once you’re aware of it, it’s pretty easy to watch it happen in real time, and somewhere in your heart of hearts, you know it’s true, okay? So, when you have a reputation as a problem solver, Somewhere in your heart of hearts, you know it’s true. When you have a reputation as a problem solver, the opportunities just naturally flow your

(Speaker 5)
way. It isn’t effortless, but it certainly at a greatly reduced effort. Salespeople and managers worry a lot about losing clients. I’ll tell you, when you solve a client’s problem, you can’t get rid of them. I mean, they stick to you like glue.

(Speaker 1)
This is so true. If you’re out there, there’s one gentleman that I met here about two months ago, Paul, at a conference. And he said to me, he says, I am a, this guy was in Florida, okay, in Florida, I won’t give any more details, I’ll just say he was in Florida. And he said, what I do is I’m a social media marketer, Paul. And I said, that’s cool. So what kind of problems do you solve for your ideal and likely buyers?

(Speaker 1)
What kind of problems do you solve? And he says, well, what I do is I generate leads. And then I said, do you?

(Speaker 29)
That was my question. Do you?

(Speaker 28)
Do you?

(Speaker 27)
It’s improvable.

(Speaker 1)
And he said, well, yeah. I said, so it’s like, how does that work? He said, well, you pay up front for the first three months. You gotta pre-pay for the first three months. And it was a huge fee, Jerry. It was like $6,000 or something. And I said, okay, and then what happens? He goes, well, then if you want to cancel,

(Speaker 1)
you can after like the third month, because it’s only like a thousand a month after the first three months, the big upfront fee. And the guy, I said, well, could you show me an example of maybe a client you’ve ever worked with where they get leads, maybe just one?

(Speaker 1)
And he’s like, well, Paul, there’s kind of too many to name, you know? I mean, it’s got a lot of them, really. And Jared, he’s fishing around. And I wasn’t trying to, I was trying to help the guy. And then he pulls me aside at our workshop, and he goes, I gotta be honest with you. I’ve never actually done this for people before. And I said, well, dude, that move doesn’t work. product and you’d be my first client and so I’m going to do your first month for free

(Speaker 1)
and then if you’re happy then I’ll charge you this much per month. But you have to be direct and honest, you’ve got to use facts, but you also have to get in front of the decision maker or you’re not going to have a conversation anyway. So the decision maker, Paul, if someone’s trying to go to Hood CPAs, they go to HoodCPApas.com, they listen to our podcast, and they show up at your office. The chances of getting to you, unless they have an appointment, are pretty slim, probably none.

(Speaker 9)
Yeah, virtually none.

(Speaker 1)
Because you are a decision maker, therefore you’ve set up systems in your life and processes to make yourself unreachable. So Jerry wrote in his book here, he said, Jerry you write, in your book the decision-maker is often as elusive as true love. Can you explain this, Jerry, why the decision-makers like Paul are always so elusive? Because they

(Speaker 5)
hate salespeople. Because salespeople waste their time. And our view is that you should be able to go in, make a complicated presentation, close the deal, and be gone at the executive level in 15 minutes. So that means that everything is quantified. It is provable. There it is.

(Speaker 5)
You have a lead. You got a story. The problem here is that salespeople spend a lot of time talking into a receptive ear, which often has no decision-making responsibility. It’s because salespeople often prefer

(Speaker 5)
to meet someone at a lower level who’s more interested in the features of what you sell, and salespeople are often intimidated by executives who are interested only in benefits. What is in this for me, for my business? That’s all they’re interested in.

(Speaker 5)
And so that would then dictate that you would walk in and say, my business is to increase your bottom line, your net profits, but 2% annually. That’s what we do. Well we can discuss that, you know, and because we’re talking the executive language. So people don’t understand that executives are not interested particularly in features. That’s for the people down the line, the kind of computer or the app that

(Speaker 5)
they’re using or some relationship that they have with them. That’s not what they’re talking about. They’re talking about the wrong stuff. Once you know what your product or service does for buyers and how you impact their company, you are way less likely likely be intimidated or willing to waste time with someone who can’t say yes it is a question yeah how are decisions like this when you’re talking to anybody in the firm I mean

(Speaker 5)
you’re just I mean you are talking to the receptionist or you’re talking to the janitor. You’re asking questions. No decisions like this are made inside this firm.

(Speaker 1)
I had a really good person today that asked me that, Jerry, a very skilled person. And for our Christmas party, it’s going to be $55 a head, you know, this year for the party. Every year, Jerry, it always is going up. Inflation, you know, it’s always going up there. This year it’s $55 a head. We have a staff all in between Z and I. There’ll probably be 400, getting closer to 500 people there this year. There’s a lot of people.

(Speaker 1)
And if you take four or 500 times 55, that’s a large number. And so a person asked me today, they said, how are decisions made for you guys, for your holiday party within Thrive. How do you do that?” I said, well, my wife decides the budget for the party. That’s what my wife does. She decides that, and so you’ve got to talk to her. I think it’s so important, because if you would have been pitching to me, I don’t care

(Speaker 1)
how good the pitch is, even if I would have loved it, Jerry, I don’t have the budget authority within our organization. We decided that 18 years ago that my wife would make all final decisions on that holiday party because I always want to swag it out and you know spend money on things we shouldn’t be buying and Vanessa is very good with the budget and so it’s such a wise question. Ask people who is the decision maker? How are decisions often

(Speaker 5)
made? Jerry that is so important. Well if you ask them who the decision maker is, they’re going to say, that’s me. That’s me. And so you have to come, you have to come in a side door on that. How are decisions made? My view is, and asking questions in probes, you start

(Speaker 4)
every one of them with how. I love it. Everyone. And once you’ve mastered how, you can move on to some other things like maybe what and who.

(Speaker 1)
How is so good. It’s so good.

(Speaker 5)
Okay. So anytime you ask somebody, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to correct you, but this is what I do.

(Speaker 4)
When you have decisions made inside the company, you’re going to get a different answer from who is a decision-maker

(Speaker 1)
Well, I’ll say this I’ll say this. I’m not gonna argue with the sales wizard I will make sure we get this the Reason why we’re doing this podcast and this next question I have for you Jerry ties into this is Once you’ve read your book right three times, okay Once I’ve read the book three times once you’ve read your own book, Jerry, 400 times. You have to make a playbook then and you have to write down the specific questions because you just pointed out you

(Speaker 1)
would prefer to ask how, which is a great question. And the thing is off the cuff is a bad way to go. The pros prepare. They got to have a playbook. So you and I are having a conversation here, but you’re going to, after you’ve read that book and you’ve outlined and you’ve taken notes You have to make an actual playbook Because you and I both know that the devil’s in the details. Can you explain what it means? For salespeople to truly make a sales

(Speaker 26)
playbook

(Speaker 5)
Right. Well, it’s it’s on a basic simple theory that if you can’t write it, you can’t do it. Self-selling is an action plan and writing comes first, then practice on the street. The playbook is a working document. It changes over time as your business, your products, your services, your competition all change right in front of your eyes. So after each call, make notes of what didn’t work and what you would change and schedule regular reviews of your playbook for review and upgrading because life is a continuous upgrade path here. It becomes an archive of the best of what you do. It’s

(Speaker 5)
also an excellent teaching tool if you’re called on to train new hires. So we have found that it’s become almost a…well, it’s not priceless, but it is very pricey in the sense that it keeps you from making as many bad moves in a live presentation.

(Speaker 1)
Oh, it’s so good when you take the time to do this. It’s so good. Thrive Nation, take the time to make a sales book. Now, Jerry, why do you think that most people never do take the time to make their sales playbook? None of our listeners, but other people, on other planets, other parallel universes, other countries, of our listeners, but other people on other planets, other parallel universes, other countries, not our country, other planetary systems, they will listen to a podcast like this and then they won’t actually make the sales playbook. What’s going

(Speaker 1)
on Jerry? Why won’t people ever take the time out to make the playbooks?

(Speaker 5)
Well they don’t understand, this is my assessment, they don’t understand the importance of the act of the creation and design stage. Actually what happens is people learn a great deal about their own business in the act of putting down the words and what they think they say. And so what you think you say, when you write it down, it changes in front of your eyes.

(Speaker 24)
Yes.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, it’s like studying for a play where you read the words and you say the words and do the words over and over and over on the script. And then one day they change right in front of your eyes because you go, oh I got it. So that’s what a playbook does.

(Speaker 5)
It allows you to get it and when building it, you know, you’re going to eliminate puffery and develop proof statements and quantify your benefits and find the unique benefits that you sell and design a mission statement for both your firm and the upcoming call. You’re going to develop each of the seven selling moves, which we’ve only touched on briefly here, as explained in the book. That is those seven selling moves. It’s really the central theme of our three-day

(Speaker 5)
hard selling course, because we end up developing the selling book, if we ever did, in class, and then sent him home to do homework. And there was two or three hours of homework every night in order to work on the playbook. So it is kind of a pain to do. It is time-consuming, and it will tax your brain because you have to shift your thinking over to how does the buyer think about this?

(Speaker 5)
We know what we think about it. How do they think about this we know what we think about it how did they think about it and you eventually develop a return on investment for the buyer of your services or your products delivered so the ROI at the higher end of selling when you’re selling larger

(Speaker 5)
ticket stuff the return on investment becomes a very critical thing. We can say, look, you’re going to give me a dollar, and I’m going to give you $10 back within 90 days. Well, I mean, that takes away, that takes care of a whole lot of selling problems right there, and you can prove there and you can prove that,

(Speaker 5)
which we could in our case. We can say, you know, it becomes.

(Speaker 1)
I want to, these final two questions, I’m very, very, very passionate, Chep, about this next question because I falsely believed, Jerry, for a decade, previous to knowing you, from age 18 to about age 20, I guess it was age 17 to age 27, age 26, somewhere in that time frame, I believed that sales was about motivation. So I would send my team to sales conferences all the time.

(Speaker 1)
And I would go to these motivational conferences. Now let me tell you the kinds of things they would teach. And when I took notes, Jerry, I’m a note taker, these are the kinds of things they would write down. They would say, everyone stand up right now and say right now, if I can conceive it, I can achieve it. And they’d bounce the beach ball.

(Speaker 1)
Pfft, the music’s playing.

(Speaker 25)
Pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft.

(Speaker 1)
And they’re saying, everybody now. they’ll have you stand up on a chair and say I can’t sell and they would talk to you about feeling it and they would talk about aligning your vision Chup with your goals and they would talk about the power of discovering the infinite knowledge that could you could find by in tapping into the universal knowledge they would never call it God but it became almost like a religion Jerry there’s all this motivation.

(Speaker 1)
And I went to one conference, and I met these people and I thought, why are all of the jackasses here? And then I thought to myself, why am I here? And then I realized I also was a jackass,

(Speaker 1)
and I was going to the Jackass Festival, and I kind of liked it for the first four or five times, because it was a Jackass and I was going to the jackass festival and I kind of liked it for the first four or five times because it was a jackass festival but over time I realized all of those people were always looking for the new get-rich-quick move, their companies weren’t working and things were going to hell because none of them could sell well. So if I’m out there saying okay I’ve been to all

(Speaker 1)
those conferences, I’ve been to all those woo-woo things, I’ve walked on hot calls, I’ve watched all the motivational… Jerry, you’ve seen it, all the videos, I’ve done trust falls with my team, I’ve gone to ropes courses. Hot calls. I’d like to get your thoughts on how salespeople can overcome their fears in the best way to

(Speaker 5)
it sounds to me like you have much of this uh… this ball of wax uh… well under control but it it it reminds me of the thing the question about the uh… the violin player in violin player after how do I get to Carnegie Hall? The answer is practice, practice, practice.

(Speaker 5)
And in sales is the same way, and it is not a glorious motivational-driven craft anymore. You can be a motivated football player, it doesn’t keep you from getting your head knocked off out there. And so I feel the same way. If you know how to defend yourself with knowledge, then you can defend yourself in every circumstance that you run into, except earthquake and bombing.

(Speaker 5)
But you’re never afraid. I was terrified for years, and I’ve been selling for, God, 150 years. Fear doesn’t exist well in the face of extensive preparation. It just doesn’t. And the way you work your people, and I think it’s the way you’re working them, which is you find a buddy and you role-play every presentation.

(Speaker 5)
You don’t wait for a perfect presentation. You just start using the skills and perfect them as you go along because it is a lifetime

(Speaker 23)
skill.

(Speaker 5)
It isn’t something you’re going to do for a year and then leave because if you go for a year and leave and you know your business, you’re going to make yourself $100,000 or $150,000 and nothing makes you feel quite as good as having a nice, fat bank account. There’s no time like the present to begin to do that, so do it now. I absolutely agree with the motivational ideas because I think people do need motivation,

(Speaker 5)
and particularly people who work alone, they get bummed, they get disappointed, and they get disappointed greatly in sales because they don’t have a skill to close deals that are walking in their door every single day, and those people turn around and walk out.

(Speaker 5)
I owned a real estate brokerage in the mountains, and I trained my people. People would come in and say, well, we wanna see what’s for sale. And I had to train my people to say, well, come back to my office and sit down here

(Speaker 5)
and talk to me about that. And the first question from our side was, what would you like the real estate to do for you? And that then began to greatly narrow the inventory about what you were going to talk about. And you just went along that whole line and you qualified, qualified, qualified, until finally it narrowed it down

(Speaker 4)
to where you had, I got two or three properties that we could look at that’ll do what you want.

(Speaker 1)
You didn’t guess. You asked those questions. It’s so powerful.

(Speaker 5)
Yeah. Well, this is out of my experience of that I had as a tradesman, and some of them worked and

(Speaker 4)
some of them didn’t. I mean, actually,’m a man known for his failures more than his successes.

(Speaker 1)
Well I think your biggest failure is agreeing to be on our podcast. That just shows a lack of judgment there, but thank you so much for making one more

(Speaker 12)
poor decision.

(Speaker 24)
I agree.

(Speaker 5)
I agree. All right now. This has been miserable.

(Speaker 1)
Okay well Jerry, I have a final question here for you. You’ve literally worked with thousands of sales people all over the world. Why do you believe that most people just try to make things up on the fly as opposed to implementing a proven path?

(Speaker 5)
I think a good part of it is laziness. I mean there’s two things, these are harsh words, but it has to do with laziness because it’s work and with a big W and it’s time consuming and people often do not even know that there is a proven path other than whatever the senior salespeople told him who gave the new boy everything that he knew, which really wasn’t very much on how to make the sale happen. The guy’s been doing it for 30 years and so he is wired.

(Speaker 5)
He’s the number one guy in the company and he is wired to accounts that he has been courting for 20 years. And so he confuses people when they say, let’s watch him work. And he goes out and he says, hey, Bob, I’m here to pick up our order for this month or for this year or here to move you over to that other place. And so when you want to get started?

(Speaker 5)
Well, because the trust is already built, it looks really easy. It’s very deceptive. Many people do not understand there’s an underlying structure to successful human communication and persuasion. And working without a structure or a plan

(Speaker 5)
is a design for failure. And in this profession, there’s no magic bullet in this profession, or any other one that you can think of or will run into in your lifetime.

(Speaker 1)
I think what you just said is so powerful. There’s no magic bullet. There’s a proven system. It works. It’s called soft selling in a hard world. Paul, I wanted to see, and Jerry, if you, if Paul no longer asks political gotcha questions, he no longer asks religious questions, he no longer paints our guests into a corner as one of our proud show sponsors, but he is a real entrepreneur

(Speaker 1)
with thousands of real customers. He has real employees. Paul, do you have a final question for the Wizard of Sales, Mr. Jerry Vance?

(Speaker 9)
Well, yeah. I apologize if this is a selfish question, but I would just like from the sales guru out there, Jerry, do you have any advice for me? Because like I say, I’m in the wisdom business. And I read a long time ago, I can’t remember, look, I read it out, that if you sell somebody, you break rapport, but if you educate them,

(Speaker 9)
you build rapport. But then I’ve got to balance that side of things, the hard sell versus being, not creating too much of a wisdom-based or, like know, like you said, vomiting my product or my wisdom or my knowledge all over them. What kind of advice could you give to me for that middle ground that I’ve, you know, I’ve got to educate them

(Speaker 9)
somewhat in that 40% that I speak, but I don’t want to vomit all over them,

(Speaker 5)
like you said earlier. Well, it sounds to me like you’re doing it right. I mean, there’s always a balance that has to be achieved, and there’s a balance between advice and persuasion and knowledge and experience and wisdom. I mean, there’s some kind of a balance, and I don’t know what that balance is, but I do know that it is there, because I mean, what’s some kind of a balance, and I don’t know what that balance is, but I do know that it is there because, I mean, what we just did here in this podcast is that I have worked hard to balance advice and wisdom and knowledge that I have gained doing this

(Speaker 5)
for most of my adult life because it takes all of it. It’s kind of the whole mcgilla, the whole package. So frankly, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. I would do what I’m doing. If you’re successful doing it, I do not believe if you can afford to give away a new car with every sale and you want to do that, for God’s sake, do it. But if you can’t afford that, you’re going to have to figure out something else.

(Speaker 5)
And so it’s one of those things where you go, I don’t like to try to change people from what they’re doing now if they’re successful now. I work with people who are less than successful than they should be. Given their talent, their education, their preparation, their time and rank, their education in the market, when they’re still losing, then they can use this information to start cleaning up their act and getting successful again. Most people have been successful at least once.

(Speaker 5)
But they wander off, they forgot where the center of the universe was, where the center of the universe is communication with buyers and potential buyers. They forgot that and they started doing other things. I mean, I’ve done it.

(Speaker 5)
I mean, I had nine man years in a software program because I lost contact with reality, actually. I lost contact with reality. I was going on this $10 million deal that I knew that it was going to be superb and I was going to be rich for life and be able to buy myself a good used car. So it was, but I was wrong. I was wrong and because I wandered off from the basics. So I

(Speaker 5)
don’t think I’m the right guy to ask about what you should do differently. If you’re successful doing what you’re doing, for God’s sake, don’t change it. Right.

(Speaker 1)
Thank you. Now, Jerry, I appreciate you so much for taking the time to be on today’s show. Where are you physically located? What state are you in?

(Speaker 5)
I am on the beach in North Florida.

(Speaker 1)
In North Florida?

(Speaker 5)
Yeah. Northeast Florida, 40 miles south of Jacksonville. I’m looking at the beach and the ocean as the… And then it is part of my success package, shall we say. That and my partner of 25 years, Iris Heron, who’s actually is a co-author of the second book I wrote, which is Soft Selling for Executives. And so anyway anyway it’s a very happy circumstance.

(Speaker 1)
Is soft-selling in a hard world an in-print for the people that want to get a copy? I’ve been buying them off of Amazon. Is there a certain place you’d recommend all of our listeners to go to to get a copy of that book? No, Amazon is the place that the stuff is bought and so that that works. Well Jerry thank you so much for being on today’s podcast if you see a pale male, the big white moose walking up and down the beach in Jacksonville that’s me because we’ve

(Speaker 1)
been to Jacksonville a few times and I am the most pale man in the history of our planet so just look away it’s I don’t want you to burn your your corneas or anything and when you see the I like reflect light don’t I Chup I mean it’s the I don’t want you to burn your your corneas or anything and when you see the I like reflect light don’t I chop I mean it’s truly Casper handsome

(Speaker 5)
right what is the scream don’t look at it

(Speaker 1)
that was Jerry Bass right here on the thriverive Time show on your podcast download. And now without any further ado, three, two, one, boom! When we first started with you on a weekly basis, how many leads were you getting from Google and how many are you getting now?

(Speaker 4)
I was at zero, didn’t even have a website. And last week we got 24, and yesterday alone I booked four jobs from Google, just yesterday alone. How much four jobs from Google, just yesterday alone.

(Speaker 1)
How much has it helped you to just have a three-legged marketing stool that you know is gonna work?

(Speaker 4)
It’s like having a salesman that’s working for me 24 seven. It’s amazing. Like getting these leads in from Google because of the work that we’re putting in on the backend is that’s just it. It’s like having a salesman that’s working 24 seven,

(Speaker 4)
getting phone calls at eight o’clock at night, getting people that book with me at three o’clock in the morning. I love it. And it’s made it to where I no longer have to stress about getting my next job

(Speaker 4)
because before I was 100% word of mouth. And before it was like, I would book a job and then I’d be halfway through it. And I would be praying that I would have another job after that. So this is just like having a salesman working for me all the time. You hear the word coach.

(Speaker 4)
And I used to think that having a business coach was like, you know, you see on social media, the guy who rents a super car and he stands next to it and he’s talking about his business coaching service and he’s never owned a business. And I used to think that that’s how they all were. And I was so wrong. It’s literally like having someone in the backseat of my car that’s constantly clapping for me, that’s cheering me on, that’s saying, hey, did you get this? Did you get this?

(Speaker 4)
Did you get this? I’m to a point now, like yesterday, I had this conversation with Avery, my fiancé. I’m so overwhelmed with the amount of work that I have coming in that I now have to get more structured with how I schedule my work. And that’s something that seven, eight months ago, I didn’t have that problem. Seven, eight months ago, I had to figure out how I was going to find my next job. So this has gone so fast and I cannot wait to see where this goes in the next year, two, three years. You are a clay. You are a partner for life with me and with Avery.

(Speaker 4)
Like we’re going to go through any business we ever start. You’ve proven to me that you are, you’re, you’re, you’re the master.

(Speaker 1)
Okay, folks, this show right here is a show that everybody needs to watch. So if you’re an entrepreneur and you feel like you’re going through hell, the pro tip is don’t stop. There’s this thing called the messy middle,

(Speaker 1)
which is the, it’s kind of the difference between once you set the big goal and you achieve it. There’s this thing called the messy middle. Once you set a big goal and you decide to go from where you are to where you want to be, there’s this thing called the messy middle. And today’s client is sprinting through the messy middle. He’s having massive success and maybe I’m wrong, but I think when

(Speaker 1)
we first met, I think he was having very little or zero leads from Google. And I think last week, I’m looking at his tracking sheet, I think he received 24 internet leads just this past week. So from maybe zero leads a week to 24 leads a week, he’s really heating up. He’s building massive success. Thomas Thill, welcome onto the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 1)
How are you, sir?

(Speaker 4)
Oh, thank you so much, Clay. I’m doing amazing. I’m just enjoying this new life of getting all these Google leads.

(Speaker 1)
It’s awesome. Well, let me pull this up real quick, because I want to verify that you are not a hologram or a male model, both of which you could be. So here we go. First off, this is your website. It’s BespokeRefinement.com. So tell us about your company, BespokeRefinement.com.

(Speaker 1)
What is Bespoke Refinement?

(Speaker 4)
What is BespokeRefinement.com? So Bespoke Refinement, I started out as a car detailer when I was 14 years old and I got into what’s called paint correction, which is perfecting new and used paint jobs. So cars that have, you know, imperfections in their paint, primarily exotic cars like Lamborghinis, Ferraris. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years. And we realized that there is a need for people to have their cars detailed, right? So, you know, paint correction is like a one-time thing.

(Speaker 4)
But having your cars repetitively detailed is something that everyone needs, right? Everyone uses a car and everyone has a car that gets dirty. So bespoke refinement, the name came from bespoke, meaning one off we do curated detail jobs for specific customers who have, let’s say you have a stain in your seat,

(Speaker 4)
but you don’t want the entire car detailed. We’ll come and we’ll take care of the one stain. Or if you have a scratch and you don’t want your interior washed, we’ll come out and we’ll take care of the scratch. So that’s what we do, but we’ve gotten ourself

(Speaker 4)
into this niche of working on high-end cars, working on Range Rovers, Porsches, Lamborghinis, Ferraris. And now with all the Google leads, I mean, I’m doing everything. I mean, I’m doing minivans, I’m doing Ford transit vans, we’re doing everything, so.

(Speaker 1)
Now I’m gonna take some notes here and I’m gonna pull this up. And if it ever feels like I’m taking notes and watching a movie over here, I’m not, I’m just taking detailed notes while organizing everything. We’re going to go over on today’s show with the limited time we have you here.

(Speaker 1)
Again, BespokeRefinement.com. You’re doing the interview today from an actual vehicle. And this is not a backhanded compliment. It’s because you are literally on the grind all the time. You did not call me and say, hey, could you put me on your show and hype up my business, I called you and I said, brother, you have a 24 times

(Speaker 1)
increase in the amount of online leads you’re getting. There’s somebody that needs to hear this show. So let’s go through the steps real quick here. For any client that we work with, we guide clients through these steps, which anybody can follow along. Folks, if you go to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash free dash resources.com.

(Speaker 1)
Somebody’s driving right now on a motorcycle asking me to repeat that. That’s Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash free dash resources. Somebody says I’m on a skateboard while taking notes with a marker. Okay, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash

(Speaker 1)
free dash resources. You can download the books for free. You can follow along. We’re going from a book called The Millionaire’s Guide, which is a book that I wrote many years ago, and it’s all about teaching you how to build a sustainably successful company. So if you’re out there today and you’re trying to build a sustainably successful company,

(Speaker 1)
you can download for free A Millionaire’s Guide. If you do download that book, you go to page five, and let’s talk about it here step by step. So one, Thomas, you know where you want to go. I’m not fishing for the specific numbers, but why is it important for you and your soon-to-be wife to be on the same page

(Speaker 4)
about your revenue goals? Because we both have the same life goals. We both want to have the same things. We both want to have financial freedom. We want to have time freedom. And so we both have a goal ourselves of how much money we each want to bring to the table each year. And then eventually, once we have a family, Avery wants to be a stay at home mom. And so getting on board with and getting on the right page with how much money bespoke refinement brings to the table is really important because eventually she’s not going to want to work.

(Speaker 1)
There it is. Again, I’m telling you folks, if you’re out there today, I want to be very clear, your wife-to-be wants to be a full-time mom. If you’re out there today and you’ve ever been a mom or you know someone who is a mom, it is a full-time mom, I applaud that. If you wanna be a full-time dad, whatever that looks like, but a business is just a vehicle to help you get from where you are to where you want to be.

(Speaker 1)
So box number two, you gotta figure out your break-even numbers, and for the sake of time we have today, we won’t get into that too much, but you have to know how many sales you need to do to break even. controversial book named the Bible, you’ll discover that God set out the pattern that if you want to create like the Creator, you work six days and rest on the seventh. You observe the Sabbath. Now, if you’re somebody who hasn’t read

(Speaker 1)
the Bible, you probably don’t know that in the book of Genesis and Exodus, God patterns the idea of working six days and resting on the seventh. If you were born after 1938, you’ve probably heard about the 40-hour work week, which was a concept introduced in 1938 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an outspoken socialist and his lesbian wife. So if you’re out there today and you are familiar with the 40 hour work week, that’s a socialist concept.

(Speaker 1)
But previous to 1938, everybody was focused on making their lives great by diligently working as unto the Lord. The Hebrew word for work means worship. The Hebrew word for work means worship. And did you know folks in Hebrew, the word work means worship and worship means work?

(Speaker 1)
What? Think about it, read it, read the book of Genesis, you’ll see it. So define how many hours per week you’re willing to work. I mean, at this point, I mean, are you going, are you going two days a week?

(Speaker 1)
Are you trying to avoid burnout?

(Speaker 4)
Are you going, you know, 10 minutes a day? Right now I’m working between 50 to 60. I was raised by a father who worked in the oil field. So he was working seven days a week. He figured out how to work eight days a week. So, cause that’s what I was raised on. I will go as long as I have to go,

(Speaker 4)
as hard as I have to go in the next three to five years so that I can build that time freedom. So for me, it’s whatever needs to get done, you know? And even with the tasks that we have with, you know, our homework for the week, right? A lot of times, if I’m working seven days a week

(Speaker 4)
working in the business, I have to find that time to work on the business. So if I work 12 hour days, six days a week, Sunday is spent getting Google reviews, doing all of the SEO stuff, working on all of the things working on the business.

(Speaker 1)
And again, I want to applaud the work you’re doing. I don’t want anyone to think this is a backhanded compliment. I wish more people would get interviewed before they become a super success. I wish more people would be interviewed in route to super success. I wish more people would be interviewed en route to super success. Now my thing is I know, and I’m not prophetic,

(Speaker 1)
I know which clients are going to become super successful. And you say, how do I know that? It’s all about work ethic and the ability to diligently knock out action items. And I’ve seen Thomas do this over a period of time. So I know what we’re watching here is a man

(Speaker 1)
on the verge of an explosive amount of success. And in case you missed it earlier, his online leads from Google, his internet leads, are up 24 times. Think about that. OK, next, you’ve got to nail down your unique value proposition.

(Speaker 1)
It’s so important, everybody watching today’s show, you figure out what you do uniquely. I mean, this just in, you’re not the only guy in Kansas City that details cars. cars, but what is it that you bring to the table at bespokerefinement.com that makes you different from your competition?

(Speaker 4)
Well, number one, we’re mobile. So we come to you. We come to your business. We come to your house. We’ll come to your work. That’s number one.

(Speaker 4)
Number two, we offer free added services. So like right now, all of our clients that book with us, if they have me come out and fix a scratch on their car, they’re getting a free ceramic coating on their windshield. If I’m cleaning a stain on their seat, they’re getting a free ceramic coating on their windshield. That’s $100 value. I do it for free. I do that to try to hook the customer. So but the

(Speaker 4)
primary thing is clay, we’re mobile. So we come to you and we offer services that most mobile car washing companies don’t offer, like paint correction, like ceramic coating. We do all of that in your garage. So you don’t have to get your car dirty, bringing it home after having it detailed,

(Speaker 4)
like if you wanted a shop.

(Speaker 1)
Now this guy’s planning a wedding while building a business. I mean, I can give you all the reasons why he wouldn’t be successful, why his life is too stressful to be successful, but he’s finding time. Now on part two of today’s show,

(Speaker 1)
just to one up today’s guest, because we have to do that, I’m gonna be interviewing a woman who has seven kids, whose husband worked 80 hours a week. When I started with her over six years ago, her and her husband, they have seven kids.

(Speaker 1)
Her husband had a job that required him to work 80 hours a week, seven days a week, and she has grown her business by 400%, grown her business by four times on part two of today’s show. Then on part three of today’s show,

(Speaker 1)
just to one-up the person that’s gonna one-up Thomas, I’m interviewing a woman who went through a divorce and through the threshold of hell and reached out to us and she’s grown a bakery in Oregon amidst the lockdowns and the COVID-related lockdown. So let’s continue. This is so important for everybody out there. Take notes, dial in. You either become a victor or a victim. Decide right now, folks. Box number five, improve your branding. This is what we do as a business coaching service.

(Speaker 1)
We do the photography, the videography, the web development, the search engine, videography, all these things. So this website here looks good, but it will always be getting better. Why? Because it’s an iteration process. Can you talk about that?

(Speaker 1)
We have a weekly coaching meeting every single week. And every single week, we’re wanting to make it better. Every week, we’re trying to improve it. Every week, we’re trying to make the font better. We’re trying to make the mobile version better. We’re trying to add more photos to the gallery. We’re adding more testimonials.

(Speaker 1)
Why do we have to iterate and make the website 1% or 2%

(Speaker 4)
better every single week, Thomas? Because we’re continuing to get clients that check the website more and more. We’re continuing to get leads. And, you know, it’s kind of like going to the gym every day. You know, if you go to the gym every day and you’re constantly working on working your chest or your back or your arms, eventually you’re going to have this perfectly sculpted body. If you go to the gym one time a week and you just do leg press, it’s you’re not

(Speaker 4)
going to look very well-rounded. So the website to me is the exact same thing. You have to make sure that you’re checking what are the drop-down screens look like, what do the back links look like, what do all of the booking options look like, the photos, all of that. I want it to look perfect. And one thing that I do is I talk to the customers that book with us online and I say, okay, what did you think of the website? I take constructive criticism. So I say, what do you think needs to change? And if I start hearing the same thing from two or more people, I take note

(Speaker 4)
of that. And those are things that we try to fix on the website.

(Speaker 1)
Unbelievable folks. I wish I could clone this guy. I mean, technically I think we could clone this guy, but I think it’d be unethical, but we’ll continue. So, box number five, the branding, we got to, your branding, branding is just what do people think of when they think about your business? When they think, when the people go to your website, your folks on a scale of one to 10, rate your website right now on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the best, one being the worst. Rate your business rate your own business cards. Just this week in one of our businesses, there’s a light that burned out at one of our businesses, so I have to go fix the lighting. Why?

(Speaker 1)
Because it sends a signal to the world that I don’t care about the business if I don’t fix the sign that’s burnt out. These are just things you have to think about. The lobby, the lobby, the decor, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the branding.

(Speaker 1)
Box number six, marketing. This is something that a lot of people want to focus on. I would say 95% of entrepreneurs that reach out to me want to focus on this and this exclusively. You do not do that, but most entrepreneurs only want to talk about marketing. Marketing is how do you generate leads in a sustainable way. Marketing is how do you generate leads in a sustainable way, in a turnkey way where your business will generate leads perpetually without you thinking about it?

(Speaker 1)
What are the three best ways for you to generate leads from your ideal and likely buyers in a sustainable way? Thomas, how much has it helped you knowing that you now have a turnkey marketing process in place where you don’t have to think about, geez, I wonder if this ad will work. Oh boy, I wonder if this billboard would work. Oh, I have an idea.

(Speaker 1)
Why don’t I do an advertisement in this magazine? Hey, I’ve got a good idea. Why don’t I do a trade show? This just in, we can try this. Hey, let’s make a series of TikTok videos. I know, let’s make a reel.

(Speaker 1)
I know what we could do. How much has it helped you to just have a three-legged marketing stool that you know is going to work?

(Speaker 23)
It’s like having a salesman that’s working for me 24-7

(Speaker 4)
it’s amazing like getting these leads in from Google because of the work that we’re putting in on the back end is But that’s just it. It’s like having a salesman that’s working 24-7 getting phone calls at 8 o’clock at night getting People that book with me at 3 o’clock in the morning. I love it. And it’s made it to where I no longer have to stress about getting my next job because before I was 100% word of mouth.

(Speaker 4)
And before it was like I would book a job and then I’d be halfway through it and I would be praying that I would have another job after that. So this is just like having a salesman working for me all the time.

(Speaker 1)
Did you just say that before we started working together your business was 100% word of mouth?

(Speaker 4)
It was 100% word of mouth.

(Speaker 1)
See, folks, that’s where running a business becomes a spiritual experience that it shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t need to pray every night for leads. They should just come in there, I’m telling you. And this just in kind of a sad thought,

(Speaker 1)
but it is a true thought. Many of the people that occupy the Forbes wealthiest Americans world, the Forbes list of wealthiest people, almost all of them are not Christians. Why am I saying that?

(Speaker 1)
Because becoming financially successful has nothing to do with becoming spiritually successful. And I would argue oftentimes the two ideas can be antagonistic. If you’re willing to exchange your soul to make a dollar, there’s a million ways to do it. But if you’re somebody who wants to not apologize

(Speaker 1)
for your belief in Christ and do a great job and make money, Thomas Phil is somebody you wanna follow. And if you don’t hate yourself, you wanna go to that website right now, bespokerefinement.com. Now if you do hate yourself, don’t worry about it. But if you don’t hate yourself, you wanna help a friend. How do you help a friend?

(Speaker 1)
What you do right now is you go to bespokerefinement.com, you copy that website URL, and just post it on social media somewhere. And why am I saying that? make their website rank higher in the Google search results. That’s why when articles are written about me in the Rolling Stone, that’s why they can be so helpful or so harmful, because those links get shared in the air everywhere.

(Speaker 1)
So again, if you’re listening to something, and you’re going, I want to see this young man be successful, go to bespokerefinement.com and share that link on your social media. Final five minutes we have here for you. You’ve got to build a sales system. That’s kind of where we’re at right now. You and I are working together now. We’re building a sales system that’s call scripts,

(Speaker 1)
recorded calls, one sheets, packages, pricing. That’s kind of where we’re at right now. But over time, we’re going to go from there. We’re going to get into tracking how much money does it cost us to generate a new customer. We’re going to build repeatable systems and processes so that people that are not you will be able to run the business and to quote Warren Buffett I’m not quoting myself Warren Buffett has a quote he talks about then again This is Warren Buffett one of the world’s most successful people. He has a quote. He says you want to build a business That’s so good that even an idiot could run it because someday an idiot will run it

(Speaker 1)
Let me read the quote here Warren Buffett says I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot could run them because sooner or later an idiot will. I mean, this is some powerful stuff. So I encourage you, we’re going to be doing this with Thomas over the coming months. We’ll be having Thomas on for some updates. Box number 10, you got to create management systems. How do you hire? How do you inspire, how do you train, how do you retain? Just this week, a true story of one of my companies, I have an employee who lost their mind. I’ll be vague about it, they’ve lost their mind.

(Speaker 1)
When I say lost their mind, they’re going through a lot of life problems and they presented them to me in the form of, I can’t work this schedule at all. And I said, well, to work for me, you got to work this schedule because these are the hours that were open. They did not want to work those hours. And so they’re like, well, if I can’t work the hours I want, I can’t work there.

(Speaker 1)
And I’m going, no problem. But the store hours don’t change. And so by having systems in place, we were able to offer this person the opportunity to stick within our schedule or go somewhere else. But the business didn’t stop because the systems were in place. Box number 12, you have to create a sustainable, repetitive weekly schedule. Box number 12, again, you gotta create,

(Speaker 1)
or box number 11, you have to create a sustainable, repetitive weekly schedule. Box number 12, you’ve gotta create a system for onboarding, hiring, inspiring humans on the planet Earth, this just in. Box number 13, you’ve gotta create

(Speaker 1)
accounting systems and processes. And box 14, you gotta design a life that you love. So you gotta block out time for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, your fun, your F7 life. What? You gotta design a life you love.

(Speaker 1)
So you gotta carve out time to block out time for what matters because what gets scheduled gets done. So you gotta block out time for your faith, your family, your friendship, your fitness, your finances, your fun, your focus. Folks, marinate on it. Think about it. This could be you.

(Speaker 1)
So Thomas, still I want to give you the final 60 seconds here. For anybody out there who has not experienced the business coaching services that I provide, what has the business coaching service meant to you? Or how has it impacted your life thus far as you’re building this business?

(Speaker 4)
Best way I can describe it. You obviously hear the word coach. And I used to think that having a business coach was like, you know, you see on social media, the guy who rents a supercar and he stands next to it, and he’s talking about his business coaching service, he’s never owned a business. And I used to think that that’s how they all were. And I was so wrong. It’s literally like having someone in the back seat of my car

(Speaker 4)
that’s constantly clapping for me, that’s cheering me on, that’s saying, hey, did you get this? Did you get this? Did you get this? And I’m to a point now, like yesterday,

(Speaker 4)
I had this conversation with Avery, my fiance. I’m so overwhelmed with the amount of work that I have coming in that I now have to get more structured with how I schedule my work. And that’s something that seven, eight months ago, I didn’t have that problem. Seven, eight months ago, I had to figure out how I was going to find my next job. So this has gone so fast and I cannot wait to see where this goes in the next year, two, three years. You are a partner for life with me and with Avery. Like

(Speaker 4)
we’re going to go through any business we ever start. You’ve proven to me that you’re the master.

(Speaker 1)
Well, you know, this is interesting. I, I uh, don’t ever go to weddings but I am going to your wedding And my wife says do you want to go to their wedding? I go I do want to go to their wedding and my wife says you want to go to a wedding You haven’t been to a wedding

(Speaker 1)
Like we’ve only been to like we’ve been married 24 years Like we’ve been to like four weddings. I just won’t go to weddings. And I just won’t. And she said, you wanna go to their wedding? I said, yeah. These guys are good people. They’re diligent people. In the Bible, in the book of Proverbs,

(Speaker 1)
it says that a diligent man will stand before kings. Let me look it up. I never wanna misquote the Bible, but it says a diligent man will rule, but laziness ends in forced labor. Let me try it again.

(Speaker 1)
The soul of the slugger, this is Proverbs 13, four, the soul of a slugger desireth in half nothing, but the soul of a diligent man shall be fat. And it says a diligent man, a diligent man shall stand before kings. What am I saying?

(Speaker 1)
I’m saying is that there’s a lot of people that reach out to me for help, but the diligence is in question. And I have to kind of coach that or teach that or try to inspire that. But that is not the case with you. You and your fiance are diligent doers.

(Speaker 1)
Proverbs 22, 29 says, seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings. He shall not stand before mean men. And I’m just telling you, I’m not a prophetic person, but I’m telling you folks,

(Speaker 1)
you might have heard it here first right now, this is going to be a man who’s going to have locations all over the cross the United States, he’s gonna start off locally, then he’s gonna grow regionally, it’s gonna be massive. I remember thinking, wow, this brand is going to be nationwide in the air everywhere. Now they have 500 locations.

(Speaker 1)
I have the same feeling, the same energy, the same quantitative data that leads me to believe you are on the verge, folks, of watching our next super success story. Everybody out there, if you don’t hate yourself, and I know you don’t, go to BespokeRefinement.com, Bespokerefinement.com. And again, for anybody out there that wants to know, one final question. When we first started with you, how many leads were you getting from Google and how many did you get last week?

(Speaker 1)
So when we first started with you on a weekly basis, how many leads were you getting from Google and how many are you getting now?

(Speaker 4)
I was at zero, didn’t even have a website. And last week we got 24 and yesterday alone, I booked four jobs from Google. Just yesterday alone.

(Speaker 1)
Bam! Hey, Thomas Still, thank you so much, brother. We’ll talk to you on our weekly coaching call. Have a great day.

(Speaker 4)
Thank you, Clay. Appreciate you, man.

(Speaker 1)
Bye-bye. How much growth have you had from the, since, you know, for since you and I first met to now, as maybe as a percentage or something?

(Speaker 3)
Oh gosh, I’m guessing but at least 400% since we started and that was through COVID.

(Speaker 13)
Our sales are four times higher than they were since we started.

(Speaker 1)
I just want people to reflect on that for a second because I talk to people every day, Lindsay, who come into my place just like you do. People that come in, they’re maybe not feeling healthy and they come to you for treatments. People come into my life and they go, my husband and I were contractors, we’re dentists, we’re doctors, they’re maybe not feeling healthy, and they come to you for treatments. People come into my life and they go, my husband and I were contractors, we’re dentists, we’re doctors, we’re lawyers.

(Speaker 1)
I just got off the phone with a lawyer. He’s a great lawyer, he went to college, he’s checking all the boxes, he has the degree, no customers. What do you say, the guy, literally, I just talked to a guy just a moment ago, and he’s in a different state, and he’s going, I have the degrees, I’ve got the accolades,

(Speaker 1)
I’ve got the resumes, I don’t have any customers. And you can tell he’s right on the verge of a breakdown in need of a breakthrough. What do you say to somebody who can kind of maybe feel like they’re overwhelmed with this whole entrepreneurship thing?

(Speaker 13)
I say it’s doable. I have a husband that has a high demand career. He works 80 hours a week in the fall. We have seven children together. They’re all active in sports. So I know what a full plate looks like. And it’s not impossible to be successful as an entrepreneur. You’ve got to follow the recipe. You may feel like Clay’s given some advice that feels redundant, but it does work. And it doesn’t require you to completely leave your other obligations alone. I’m at my kids’ sports, I’m there for them on the weekends, I get them carpooled everywhere, and I still own a multimillion dollar business.

(Speaker 16)
Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show, and thank you for all you do.

(Speaker 1)
I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects.

(Speaker 20)
You know what I mean?

(Speaker 16)
People rave about what they learned from you. So congratulations.

(Speaker 1)
Sean, guess what’s happening on June 5th and 6th right here in Tulsa, Russia. We are probably gonna have an amazing business conference here at Tulsa, Russia. Yes, we’re joined by Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow is going to be joining us right here at the Thrive Time Show, World Headquarters, June 5th and 6th.

(Speaker 1)
He’s a very successful football player, obviously a Heisman Award winner, but he’s also a very successful entrepreneur. Now, when you work with real clients, Sean, real clients you really work with to help them grow their companies. Do you ever hear a business owner tell you that they didn’t have time to get something done? Every day. How often is is not having enough time a problem for business owners? All the time.

(Speaker 1)
It’s almost it’s like maybe 90% of the issues as people are trying to grow their company. Well Tim Thiebaud is going to come join us here at the in-person Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop and he’s going to teach us time management and his approach to personal self-discipline and getting things done. Also at the workshop, I’ll put up on the website so people can see it here, also at the two day

(Speaker 1)
interactive workshop, Sean, we are going to be, oh there it is, we’re gonna be teaching accounting, systems creation, marketing, human resources, how to hire, inspire, train and retain great people, accounting, social media advertising, search engine optimization. Sean, what’s the area where most clients ask you for help the most? Is it generating leads? Is it hiring people? What’s the biggest issue that most business owners have by

(Speaker 11)
default before they come to one of our workshops? Well, I think it’s management because time is the most valuable resource for these business owners. And being able to manage their time is the first thing. Once they get that under control, then generally the numbers, being

(Speaker 11)
able to track their business and be able to make the best decisions based on numbers rather than emotions is a big area. And we teach all of this stuff at the business conference, particularly you Clay, you love to hammer on time management.

(Speaker 11)
It’s my favorite part of the conference.

(Speaker 1)
Now I’m gonna pull this up real quick here because we’re gonna go through, if you’re not excited, I wanna get you excited about what we’re gonna cover at the workshop here, okay? Okay, all right. The two day interactive workshop,

(Speaker 1)
this is my 20th year hosting workshops. So I’m telling you folks, we’re in rare form here. So one is the idea of establishing your revenue goals. I think most entrepreneurs don’t know their revenue goals. Would you agree, or am I off my rocker? No, that’s totally a very important point we do with every one of our new clients that come on board is we have to establish the revenue goals.

(Speaker 1)
And generally speaking, we have a vague idea, but not an exact idea that can be engineered down into the daily goals for sales.

(Speaker 11)
And so that’s a really big one.

(Speaker 1)
Now next is the break-even numbers. What kind of sales do you have to do to even break even? Third is how many hours per week do you want to work? What is your ideal schedule as an entrepreneur? Box number four, how do you stand out in the clutter of commerce?

(Speaker 1)
What makes your company unique from all the different businesses? In a world of brown cows, herds of brown cows, proverbial brown cows, the analogy of brown cows, how can you be the purple cow that stands out? How can you be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil?

(Speaker 1)
Box number five, branding. How do you improve the perception that people have of you, your business, your brand? Box number six, marketing. Your three-legged marketing stool. What is a turnkey way for you and your company to generate leads so you can succeed?

(Speaker 1)
Because if you don’t have any leads, your business will bleed. If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell. You’ve got to generate leads. Sean, how often do business owners by default tell you they have a hard time generating leads? It’s almost all of the time. It’s really a huge struggle. And many times they may be creating leads, but just through word of mouth. So they get to a point where we’ve implemented systems and then they need to create more leads, but they’ve never had to do it.

(Speaker 1)
So there’s a lot of different scenarios where business owners are like, how do you create leads? Something we hammer on at the conference a lot. Box number seven, box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Again, box number seven, create a sales conversion system, sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, pre-written emails, lead trackers, all of the sales tools, the sales print pieces, the one sheets, the big screens that you see

(Speaker 1)
inside the business, whether you’re a doctor, you’re a dentist, the one sheets, the big screens that you see inside the business, whether you’re a doctor, you’re a dentist, you’re a lawyer, you got to have sales systems in place. We help you with that. Box number eight, what does it cost you to get another customer? Step number eight, what does it cost you to actually acquire a customer?

(Speaker 1)
Step number nine, it’s hard to build organization if you’re not organized. We’re going to teach you how to create repeatable systems, processes, file organization. Box number 10, we’re going to teach you how to manage people, real people, on the planet Earth. This just in, we’re going to teach you how to manage real people on the planet Earth. Box number 11, how to create a sustainable schedule that works for you and your family. Step number 12, how to create human resources systems for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining great people. Box number 13, accounting. This just in, we have to cover accounting.

(Speaker 1)
It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep. We’re going to cover all the accounting things you need to know. And step 14, finally, what is the point of even achieving success? We’re going to go over the, what is the point of even achieving success? How to design a life where you carve out enough time for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, your fun, and where you’re gonna spend your focused time. We’re gonna go through that all this and

(Speaker 1)
more. Now the workshop, Sean, it’s June 5th and 6th. It’s a two-day interactive workshop. Yeah. Tickets, we always do it. It’s $250 or whatever price that someone can afford. Sean, why do we let people name their price? Why do we have scholarship tickets available if somebody can’t afford the $250 general admission ticket?

(Speaker 11)
Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it. You could be at a startup phase, or you could be way along in your business. But we want to make it accessible for everybody. I think it actually goes back, too, to a story of your dad. And it goes all the way back to how you’ve always

(Speaker 11)
done this as a business coach, trying to make sure that your average people out there have access to the things that work.

(Speaker 1)
Now 7 a.m. to 5, Sean, why don’t we go from 7 to 5 both days? I mean, it’s 10 hours a day, 20 hours of training over two days. Why do we do 10 hours a day, Sean, of back-to-back workshops? We do a 30-minute teaching session, we do a 15 minute question and answer session, and then we take a break.

(Speaker 1)
30 minutes of teaching, 15 minutes of question and answer, then we take a break. Why do we do that format, Sean? That format is so that we can keep people engaged and not just sitting there listening, but also getting involved. We really encourage people to ask questions, and that’s really where the juiciness of the conference comes out, is you can put your personal situation and your questions on the board and clay will tee off

(Speaker 1)
And give you direct advice even without being in our coaching program. You can get direct coaching from clay It’s really a very engaging format. I enjoyed a lot Sean final 60 seconds pop quiz here What date is the conference June 5th and 6th? 2025 I’ll see your question two, who’s our keynote speaker coming to the conference there, Sean? Tim Tebow is our keynote speaker.

(Speaker 1)
Sean, question number three, how much does it cost to come to our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma? I think it’s, did you say it’s $250 or whatever you can afford? That’s right, $250 or whatever you can afford. Sean, how do you spell Eric Trump backwards? Uh, P, uh, M, U, R, T, C, I, R, E.

(Speaker 11)
Ooh, that took a long time.

(Speaker 1)
I’ll have to listen to this. Alright, again, that’s Sean Lohman. I’m Clay Clark, inviting you to come join us at the in-person Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop June 5th and 6th right here in Tulsa, Russell Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sean I really am I’m excited to have this event I’m excited to see you at the event June 5th and 6th right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma Tim Tebow baby it’s Tebow time. Oh yeah. Tulsa, Russell.

(Speaker 22)
You could be anywhere doing a lot of different things but you chose to be here.

(Speaker 17)
Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay is the greatest. I met his goats today.

(Speaker 15)
I met his dogs. I met his chickens.

(Speaker 17)
I saw his compound.

(Speaker 21)
He’s like the greatest guy.

(Speaker 17)
I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy is like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right?

(Speaker 4)
His entire life, Clay Clark Clark his entire life is marketing.

(Speaker 12)
Hey guys Luke Erickson here with the Thrive Time Show. As you can see behind me we’ve got all kinds of energy going on. People are starting to show up for the conference and it is hot in this place. We got grill guns over here, we’ve got people playing the drums, we’ve got a fire breather,

(Speaker 12)
and man, people are so excited as they come in.

(Speaker 15)
Woo! Woo! Woo!

(Speaker 12)
Woo! We’ve got Aaron Andes with Shotguns up there. We’ve got Steve Burlington with Total Ending Concepts up there. Talking about what is possible when you just implement, when you implement, when you do that. It’s so exciting. People are going crazy. Guys, Luke Erickson with the Thrive Time Show here with you. It is day two and the energy is high. People are so excited to be showing up.

(Speaker 12)
The team is ready. Come on, let’s see what it’s like to go on in for Day 2.

(Speaker 15)
Follow me.

(Speaker 12)
I’ll tell you what, people are so excited to be here for Day 2. It is going to be incredible.

(Speaker 5)
Cannot wait to see what today has in store. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

(Speaker 15)
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

(Speaker 12)
Yeah! are breaking it down for people so that you can clearly understand how to come up top in Google. It’s doable. It’s possible. Now we’re in the middle of a break and what we like to do is we like to give you as much tangible and relevant information from about the start of the hour for 45 minutes. Then we take approximately a 15 minute break to allow people to connect with other entrepreneurs around them. Bathroom break, and also use this time to just really digest all of the good information that you’re receiving the whole time.

(Speaker 12)
Right behind me we’ve got Bob with his grill gun, melting an ice sculpture. It is awesome. The ice sculpture represents our life, right? It’s here for a time, but we all need to have the sense of urgency to implement the things that we’re learning so that we can make the most of the time that we have. I heard about it on the podcast. Started listening to the podcast, became a fan, and then figured out about the workshop. I own an insurance and financial services agency, and I was hoping to learn from the

(Speaker 8)
workshop systems and processes. I’m big on systems and processes and always learning better ways to run a business more efficiently. The atmosphere is second to none. It’s a high-energy, really cool atmosphere to be around. Contagious, I would say. Just something every entrepreneur, I think, would appreciate and love.

(Speaker 8)
I’d say humorous, high energy, and full of substance, which I think is the key. A lot of business coaches or seminars maybe are high on motivation and making you feel good but don’t have a lot of substance that you can take back and implement you know the following Monday where his does man has a lot of valuable things I’m gonna say

(Speaker 8)
like I came to this is my second workshop the first workshop I took back really the importance of a group interview I used to spend hours and hours interviewing people, screening resumes, and that saving my time on that part is valuable. It was that and then the sales scripting that have been two major things just so far. And I think they’re missing out on, you know, expert advice from somebody who’s been there, done that, built companies, has learned a lot of lessons. You know, that’s what I’m always looking for is somebody that I can learn from that’s ahead of where I am. And I think if you choose not to come, you’re missing

(Speaker 2)
out on a lot of good advice that could help your business. Hi, I’m Aaron Antus with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them and I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden so I was willing to listen. In my career I’ve sold a little over 800 million dollars in real estate. So honestly I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes and then I met Clay and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing 800

(Speaker 2)
million in sales over a 15-year career I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes and I mean we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know,

(Speaker 2)
but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably

(Speaker 2)
never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us and it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come

(Speaker 2)
from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn

(Speaker 2)
from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not

(Speaker 2)
paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in

(Speaker 2)
a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves

(Speaker 2)
we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town. And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing.

(Speaker 2)
And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you if you’re thinking about working with clay. I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month.

(Speaker 2)
Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35- year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1800% increase in our internet leads. Going from 10 a month to 180 a month, that would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to

(Speaker 2)
give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing, I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it because we sure haven’t.

(Speaker 7)
My name is Danielle Sprick and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full-time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide, what do I want to do?

(Speaker 7)
My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it.

(Speaker 7)
I love people, I love working with people, I love the building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things. The processes and the advertising and marketing. I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time. And he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business,

(Speaker 7)
our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago. And in that time we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in

(Speaker 7)
today building a business having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen.

(Speaker 6)
I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer to insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient patient and that’s it.

(Speaker 6)
My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean I went to medical school. I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us

(Speaker 6)
weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans.

(Speaker 6)
He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through

(Speaker 6)
and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards, and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic.

(Speaker 16)
Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show and thank you for all you do.

(Speaker 1)
I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects.

(Speaker 20)
You know what I mean?

(Speaker 9)
People rave about what they learn from you. So congratulations.

(Speaker 10)
And we went from expecting maybe 250,000 this year to we’re at 400,000. Hi, I’m Kelsey with K&D’s Wood refinishing, business owner at 23. So I’ve been working this K&D’s company for about five years now and we started working with Thrive not too long ago and we went from expecting maybe $250,000 this year to we’re at $400,000.

(Speaker 10)
That’s what we’re going to hit or exceed. So we’re pretty excited about that. It’s been pretty much just listening to what they have to say. Their hiring process has just really been incredible as far as finding good quality help. And just the accountability of meeting up with them weekly and such good insight, the resources they have for specific business questions. It’s all been really incredible. It’s been

(Speaker 10)
a great experience. So I’d recommend it to anybody. What I’ve seen from Clay and his

(Speaker 19)
group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system and it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day-to-day basis.

(Speaker 3)
Hi there, my name is Stephanie Pipkin. I am 24 years old and I own Black River Falls Cleaning Services. We opened in April of 2019 and it is now mid-June of 2020. So I wanted to talk today about the success and growth I have achieved by implementing the Proven Path with Clay Clark’s team and my business coach Luke from Thrive Time. It has been insane to say the least. I started working with them in mid-February of this year. So we’re about four months in of working together and it has completely transformed my business in pretty much every facet. So I’m gonna check my notes here. So in four months my leads have

(Speaker 3)
tripled. I was getting probably like two leads a week now I’m getting more in the like 10 to 15 leads a week. I have doubled my number of employees. I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company week to week it seems like. We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now 14 to 15 appointments a day. And hiring quality employees has become much simpler and less stressful by using their

(Speaker 3)
systems for hiring. I typically only get maybe two complaints a month if that and everybody shows up to work. I just have really high quality employees now, especially in something people typically consider a high turnover type of work, you know cleaning houses cleaning businesses I have amazing employees now and I get rid of the ones who are not so amazing and bring on new ones because of

(Speaker 3)
You know group interviews and higher interviewing every single week. It’s just been great and such a Let I don’t waste as much time on Low quality candidates anymore. And your coach will hold you accountable, which I love. Again, the tough love is really great. Luke’s like a stern father figure, but he’s also nice, but also stern when he needs to

(Speaker 3)
be when I’m being lazy and not doing the things that I know I need to do because I don’t want to do them. So that’s just great. Worth every penny. I mean I’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can and maybe someday I’ll be able to but I would just say go for it if it seems like a good fit just go for it. Do what they say even if you think it’s stupid

(Speaker 3)
or ridiculous just do what they say because it’ll work. You know people when they look at my business you know people in my town they think I’m lucky they think I’m just you know things just happen for me. And you know, maybe I am lucky, but it has a lot to do with hard work and perseverance and working till you cry sometimes. That’s just being an entrepreneur,

(Speaker 3)
which if you’re a business owner, you understand that. But it’s having these systems in place of, you know, of course I’m gonna be successful. It’s an absolute, because I have all this stuff in the background happening, and I have Luke and Clay and everybody on their team working really hard to make sure that I’m a success. And I can tell that

(Speaker 3)
they are just so excited every single week when I’m having all these wins and things like that. They’re so excited for me. So it’s the best thing ever, and I would suggest to anybody to work with them. So sorry for the long-winded reply, but I just had so much to say, and I could go on for hours probably

(Speaker 3)
about how amazing they are. But thank you to Clay and Luke and the entire team there, everything you guys have done for me, and I am so excited to continue to work with you for years to come. Thanks so much for watching.

(Speaker 9)
My saying is if it’s important to you, hire a coach. And I think that’s one of the reasons people are not successful is they, you know, they eat a cheeseburger instead of hiring a coach, you know what I mean? And so my coach pushes me, they’re younger than me, they push harder, they’re trained. And as my rich dad always said, amateurs don’t have a coach,

(Speaker 9)
but professionals always have coaches. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important. My rich dad was one of those persons. You’re on it, man. You’re on it, you’re on it.

(Speaker 16)
Everybody, listen to this guy.

(Speaker 18)
He knows what he’s talking about. You have on it man. You’re on it. You’re on it. Everybody listen to this guy. He knows what

(Speaker 16)
he’s talking about. You have the macro picture. Very few people have that point of view.

(Speaker 9)
Clay, you’re an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur. And as they say in Stoic, the obstacle is the way. Clay, you’re an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur. And as they say in Stoic, the obstacle is the way. And so if you let you let these pinheads get in your way, you’re in trouble.

 

Transcribed with Cockatoo